CARDIN - On Tuesday as Kim Kuester drove to her Cardin home for the last time, she remembered the words she spoke so often as a teenager growing up in Miami.

Kim Kuester looks at her house for the last time before leaving on Tuesday. Kuester and her family were the last residents of Cardin following the Tar Creek buyout. GARY CROW/For the Tulsa World

"I said I would never live in Picher or Cardin," Kuester said.

Those words left an empty feeling for her as she and her husband, Tony - the last remaining family in Cardin - received a check for the final portion of their federally funded buyout.

For the past 25 years the couple have lived and raised their family in the quiet rural Ottawa County community located about two miles southeast of Picher.

They moved to Cardin and bought their first house, a wooden frame structure, for $4,000, in 1985. After their home was destroyed in 1996 by a tornado, the couple demolished what remained and bought a double-wide mobile home.